The textlinguistic dimension of corpus linguistics: The support function of English general nouns...

JB[v.20020404] Prn:3/06/2003; 10:13 F: IJCL8105.tex / p.1 (50-115)

The textlinguistic dimensionof corpus linguistics

The support function of English general nounsand its theoretical implications

Michaela MahlbergUniversity of Saarbrücken

Corpus research can provide important insights into different areas oflanguage description. The present paper takes a textlinguistic approach to thedescription of English and puts into perspective the ‘support function’ ofgeneral nouns such as man, move and thing. The support function capturesvarious ways in which general nouns are used to present informationappropriately in a given context. Specifically, three aspects of the supportfunction are discussed: ‘giving emphasis’, ‘adding information in passing’ and‘providing an introduction’. From a more theoretical point of view, thepresent paper argues for an integration of the pattern grammar approachwith a textlinguistic perspective.

Keywords: support function, general nouns, context, textual functions,pattern

. Introduction

A corpus linguistic approach to the description of language stresses the contextdependency of words in naturally occurring language. It has become obviousthat there are units of meaning larger than a single word form and that lexisand grammar cannot be separated. But we need to go a step further. There is adimension to corpus linguistics which has not received enough attention so far:the textlinguistic dimension. To account for the complex ways in which mean-ing is created, textual relations between linguistic items play an important role.The factors that contribute to the meanings of words go beyond the phrasal

International Journal of Corpus Linguistics : (), ‒.

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Michaela Mahlberg

context, and the functions that words tend to fulfil in texts can be regarded aspart of their meaning. For some words this seems to be more obvious than forothers. The pronoun he, for instance, is typically characterised by its poten-tial to function as a cohesive device, but it is not only the traditional ‘functionwords’ that fulfil textual functions. Textual behaviour can be an important fea-ture for ‘lexical words’, too. In the present article I will illustrate this by lookingat the support function of general nouns.

. General nouns

The expression ‘general noun’ can be found in uses where no theoretical defini-tion is implied, but it is also used in contexts that draw on Halliday and Hasan’s(1976) approach. Halliday and Hasan (1976:274) describe general nouns as “asmall set of nouns having generalized reference within the major noun classes,those such as ‘human noun’, ‘place noun’, ‘fact noun’ and the like.” They givethe following examples:

people, person, man, woman, child, boy, girl [human]creature [non-human animate]thing, object [inanimate concrete count]stuff [inanimate concrete mass]business, affair, matter [inanimate abstract]move [action]place [place]question, idea [fact] (Halliday & Hasan 1976:274)

For Halliday and Hasan (1976:274) a general noun is “a borderline case be-tween a lexical item [...] and a grammatical item”. Therefore such a nouncan create a special kind of cohesion, which Halliday and Hasan (1976:279)illustrate with the following – by now famous – example:

I turned to the ascent of the peak.

(1) The ascent(2) The climb(3) The task(4) The thing(5) It

is perfectly easy.

(Halliday & Hasan 1976:279)


The textlinguistic dimension of corpus linguistics

Here we have a continuum of cohesive elements. Moving from top to bot-tom of this scale the expression becomes more general, and the general nounthing comes just before the pronoun it. Thus general nouns are compared topronouns: in both cases “interpretation is possible only by reference to some-thing that has gone before” (Halliday & Hasan 1976:275). Halliday and Hasan(1976) raise an interesting point when they stress the functional interpreta-tion of items which are typically described from a lexical point of view. Gen-eral nouns have also attracted the interest of other researchers and this classoverlaps to some extent with subcategories of nouns such as ‘anaphoric nouns’(Francis 1986) or ‘shell nouns’ (Schmid 2000), for instance (for an overviewsee Mahlberg 2000).

The definition of general nouns that is used in this article derives from theanalysis of natural language data. It captures the notion of ‘general meaning’by considering the frequency of these nouns and their textual behaviour (cf.Mahlberg in preparation):

general nouns are nouns which are relatively1 frequent and which fulfil severaltextual functions.

Within the scope of this article I cannot go into details about a description ofgeneral nouns, but I will focus on one of their textual functions. Textual func-tions are understood here as these functions of a word which connect it withits context and contribute to the creation of a text, i.e. a unit of communica-tion. We can identify various kinds of textual functions and one word may fulfilseveral of them at a time. The cohesive function is one example of the textualfunctions that general nouns can fulfil, though a corpus linguistic approachopens a new view towards the concept that Halliday and Hasan (1976) suggest(cf. Mahlberg 2000).2 The support function, which is the focus of interest ofthis article, is another important factor in the description of general nouns.As a feature of these nouns the support function illustrates how functionalcharacteristics of words can be integrated into a description of their meaning.

. The support function

The relationship between meaning and context is not only crucial for generalnouns, it is one of the central issues in corpus linguistics. Its theoretical basiscan be seen in Firth’s contextual theory of meaning, as is argued by Tognini-Bonelli (2001:157f.), for instance. For Firth (1957:19) all statements of mean-


Michaela Mahlberg

ing are statements of contextual relations. Linguistic items have to be seen bothin their linguistic and their situational context. In this way language can beseen as action (cf. Tognini-Bonelli 2001:4) and we can define meaning as use(cf. Stubbs 2001:20). Thus meaning and function are not separable. Within acorpus semantic approach, meanings are described on the basis of the evidenceprovided by natural language data (Stubbs 2001:20). This data, however, callsfor new terms and concepts in order to arrive at an adequate language descrip-tion. Some important steps in this direction have already been taken by Sin-clair (1998), who offers an illuminating description of the notion of ‘lexicalitem’, and by Hunston and Francis (1999) with their highly innovative ‘patterngrammar’ approach.

It is especially the concept of ‘pattern’ that plays an important role for thesupport function as a feature of general nouns: “The patterns of a word canbe defined as all the words and structures which are regularly associated withthe word and which contribute to its meaning” (Hunston & Francis 1999:37).Another important observation is the following: “words which share a givenpattern tend also to share an aspect of meaning” (Hunston & Francis 1999:3).The data, however, shows that Hunston and Francis’ (1999) concept alone isnot sufficient to capture the phenomena under investigation. In Section 5, Iwill discuss the pattern grammar framework in more detail, but first, I willgive a definition of the support function and look at examples to illustrate thisconcept before I move on to a discussion of its theoretical implications. Theexamples are taken from the British National Corpus and the Bank of English.3

In the present article a discussion of quantitative aspects is deliberately ex-cluded, since the focus is on a qualitiative description of the support func-tion. This, however, is not to imply that qualitative and quantitative aspects areindependent from each other (cf. Mahlberg in preparation).

The support function is defined as follows (cf. Mahlberg in preparation):

A noun fulfils the support function if it occurs in a construction where it doesnot contribute much factual meaning but helps to present information ac-cording to the communicative needs of the speaker/writer and hearer/reader.

The term ‘support function’ is partly motivated by an expression that Sinclair(1999) uses when he describes the functions and uses of the noun way. He ar-gues that in a major part of its occurrences way can be characterised as “offeringits ‘noun-ness’ as a support for other words” (Sinclair 1999:172). According toSinclair (1999:172) most of the functions of way “seem to be of an enablingnature”, i.e. that phrases with way can contribute “to the flexibility and ex-



tendibility of the syntax” (Sinclair 1999:169). In the following concordance (1)we find instances of way introducing both finite and non-finite postmodifyingstructures into clauses (way in which/of/to...).

(1) way (BNC)

tional Geriatric Medicine Service. The way in which specialist health

ed towards Miss Shiffins and the funny way in which they ( Pip and

aucus, have been deeply unhappy at the way policy has developed during

Lucky Penny insurance provides a sure way of boosting purchaser’s

ng to react, if we were going to find a way of cantering the problems we

able foods. A simpler and more pleasant way of achieving the same end was to

grammar and syntax, besides being a ready way to introduce general linguistic

ndfather had explained that the only true way to bake bread was to burn it

ence and technology, ,thinks that another way to save money is to merge Russia

While from a syntactic point of view such constructions can be interpreted asforming complex structures, with regard to the communicative situation thenominal expressions might contribute to the efficiency of the text, as in thefollowing two examples of move:

(2) (BoE) So Mr Clarke’s move at the Madrid summit to pre-empt furtherdiscussion by reiterating the Cabinet line has infuriated vocal sceptics suchas John Redwood and Bill Cash.

(3) (BoE) Dresdner, from Germany, has been mentioned as a possible bid-der in the French market – a move to which the French Governmentis opposed – while Germany’s Commerzbank has been rumoured to beinterested in buying up Flemings in the UK.

In example (2) move can be said to have the meaning ‘action’, or more precisely‘action that you take in order to achieve something’, which seems to be amongthe most frequent meanings of this noun (cf. Longman Dictionary of Contem-porary English 1995, Collins Cobuild English Dictionary for Advanced Learners2001). In our example the aim of the action is given in the infinitive construc-tion: ‘to pre-empt further discussion’. The person who acts is given by the geni-tive. We learn where the action takes place and it is even stated what Mr Clarkedoes: he reiterates the Cabinet line. All this creates a long noun phrase whichis packed with information. But the head of this noun phrase, the noun move,does not contribute much to the facts that are described. Instead, it provides akind of hook onto which all the other information can be put. So the supportby move enables this efficient packing of information. Similarly, example (3)illustrates an efficient way of presenting information. Here move allows someinformation to be added which is not directly integrated in the clause structure


Michaela Mahlberg

but is given in hyphens like a kind of comment. The important thing is not toinform the reader that Dresdner’s bidding in the French market is a move, butthat the French Government is opposed to it. And the construction with moveallows this point to be made in a compact and short form.

So far the description of examples has focused on the aspect of efficiencyin packing information. However, the support provided by a general noun canalso play a part in the creation of other effects. In the following, three aspects ofthe support function will be illustrated. Here it is important to stress that it isnot the noun on its own that creates a special effect, but the noun contributesto a certain way of presenting information.

. Presenting information

. Giving emphasis

One of the effects that can be created with the help of a general noun isemphasis, as in the following examples:

(4) (BoE) As there was only one gold medal, the tie was split in favour ofBruce Birchall because of his perfect 25/25 score on round two. A manwho can state with conviction that 179084 is the number of cheese-gratersin Swindon deserves the title of World Creativity Champion.

(5) (BoE) IT would doubtless be too much to expect Spurs fans to suddenlyexpress a sweetness for Alan Sugar, a man who’s been subjected to moreabuse and hate mail than the average child molester.

(6) (BoE) The eye shadow looked so good that Liz’s friend decided to borrowit (a woman who rarely spends less than <KPD> 20 on her on her make-up) and became an instant convert.

Example (4) contains the final sentences of a text about a creativity compe-tition. Somewhere in the middle of the text the tasks of the contestants areexplained and we learn that they have to deal with the following problem: If179,084 is the answer, what was the question? The relative clause in the lastsentence of the text refers back to this task and presents the suggestion that wasregarded as the most creative one: Bruce Birchall suggested that 179,084 was thenumber of cheese-graters in Swindon. Since Birchall’s answer is given in a rel-ative clause that modifies the general noun man this information is presentedin an indirect way. The use of man with the indefinite article helps to create a



sentence which could be used to talk about a class of people with the ability togive such an impressive answer. Thus the text presents it as almost inevitablethat someone who was able to come up with this idea about the cheese-graterswould win the competition. In this apparently general sentence, however, theinformation in the relative clause describes Bruce Birchall and what he did. Byputting this information, which has not been mentioned before, in a definingrelative clause it is given emphasis and the whole sentence is felt to create astrong impression and seems to be a good way to end the article. It even addsan ironic or mocking tone.

Examples (5) and (6) are similar to example (4) in the sense that informa-tion is presented in the form of a defining relative clause modifying a generalnoun. In example (5) the effect of the construction becomes particularly obvi-ous when we compare this example with a sentence in which a man is left outso that the relative clause functions as a non-defining modifier of the propername: Alan Sugar, who .... In this case the information appears more as anadditional comment than a prominent point. Example (6) illustrates that thegeneral noun construction can also allow for some flexibility for the position ofthe information presented in the relative clause, which can further contributeto giving emphasis.

. Adding information in passing

While in the above examples the general noun helps to give prominence tosome point that is made in the text, a general noun can also function in theopposite way.

(7) (BoE) And, of course, where there’s ladies (First or otherwise), there’sGeorge Hamilton. The man with the chicken tikka complexion pitchesup in London this Saturday for a gig hosting the British Line DancingChampionships at Wembley Arena.

In this example the author of the text comments on the colour of GeorgeHamilton’s face which to him looks like chicken tikka. This information is notpresented as a central point of the text, but is given ‘in passing’. Although thisdescription of George Hamilton’s looks has not been mentioned before we findit at the beginning of the sentence where we can often expect given informa-tion. Furthermore, the noun phrase The man with the chicken tikka complexionrefers to a person who has just been mentioned while the rest of the sentenceprovides a lot of new information. Thus the information given in the post-


Michaela Mahlberg

modifier of man is integrated smoothly in the cohesive flow of the text and it ispresented as if it were a point that could not be questioned. So the noun phrasewith man allows the writer to simply slip in a comment.4 This way of present-ing the information should also be seen in relation to the slightly mocking toneof the comment which is in line with the rest of the article.

. Providing an introduction

The following two examples contain instances where the general noun can beregarded as a help to structure a sentence according to the information prin-ciple, which can contribute to the cohesion of a text and simplify the planningand/or decoding of a message (cf. e.g. Biber et al. 1999:896f.). The informa-tion principle assumes a preferred distribution of given and new informationin the clause, so that the information load increases gradually, as in examples(8) and (9). Here the sentence begins with the general noun man, whose post-modifier refers back to given information which is then supplemented by newinformation. So the general noun helps to create a kind of introduction.

(8) (BoE) Later on in the Prime Minister’s question Mr Major DID refer to thechoice of a black barrister, Mr John Taylor, as the Conservative candidatefor Cheltenham. He said the reported remarks critical of Mr Taylor werenot sentiments that had any place in the Conservative Party. The man whocalled Mr Taylor a bloody nigger, Mr Bill Galbraith, has admitted that [. . .]

(9) (BNC) The man who played that part was Norman Lumsden, and [. . .]

Another important example of a general noun contributing to the creation ofan introduction is found in the expression the thing is, as illustrated by the con-cordance lines below (10). The introductory function of this phrase, however,is somewhat different from that of the constructions in examples (8) and (9).According to Biber et al. (1999:1073, 1075) the phrase the thing is can be calledan ‘overture’. This is a kind of ‘utterance launcher’, i.e. it has “a special functionof beginning a turn or an utterance” (Biber et al. 1999:1073). In such examplesthe noun phrase could be described as “more or less redundant from a purelypropositional point of view” (Schmid 2000:9), but with regard to the commu-nicative effect the general noun fulfils the support function. In the textual flowthing helps to provide a kind of introduction or focusing device. This construc-tion is mainly used in spoken English, where it can also be used to give speakerstime to plan or organise what they are saying.



(10) thing BoE

t it. <ZG0> <F0X> Yeah. Well the thing is she offered me less really

when we become European now the thing is the British Isles are

to teachers? <M06> Yeah. He the thing is I mean he’s not an

ious appreciation. ’Anyway, the thing is, a lot of these old

tly put the phone back. <p> The thing is, it was the same man both

at’s what we got in America. The thing is, more of us are out of the

is bus: it’s my mobile home. The thing is, you can be huge in Europe,

. Levels of description

For a brief discussion of some major theoretical implications of the supportfunction of general nouns, it is necessary to return to Hunston and Francis’(1999) concept of ‘pattern’. In the above examples we found the nouns un-der investigation in some constructions that seem to be associated with thesenouns and in this sense there is a similarity to the idea of pattern. For the repre-sentation of patterns Hunston and Francis (1999:44ff) use a shorthand codingsystem. With such shorthand symbols we could represent the constructionsfound in examples (4) to (6), for instance, as a N pron-rel, where N standsfor the nouns that occur in this construction, in our case man and woman,and pron-rel represents the relative pronoun. Such a pattern, however, cannotbe found within Hunston and Francis’ (1999) theoretical framework. They ar-gue that “relative clauses can qualify almost any noun, and are not consideredto be part of their complementation patterns” (Hunston & Francis 1999:49).However, within the framework discussed here, relative clauses can belong tothe characterising features of certain nouns because we take a larger contextualperspective: the context makes clear that the information which is presentedin a construction containing a general noun is used to characterise a specificperson. This person has been introduced in the preceding text and we can evenfind a name, like Bruce Birchall in the cheese-graters example (4), or anotherrather precise term, like Liz’ s friend (example (6)). It is because of this contex-tual information that the general noun can be interpreted as contributing toan effective way of presenting information that gives emphasis to some pointmade in the text.

Since the textual perspective focuses on different aspects of meaning thanthe pattern grammar approach does, it can unveil other associations betweenmeanings and constructions. The description of patterns mainly takes into ac-count what can be described as lexico-grammatical meaning while the identifi-


Michaela Mahlberg

cation of the support function also depends on those aspects of meanings thatbelong to the textual behaviour of a word.5 Thus, for the concept of the supportfunction it is essential to take two levels into consideration. First, we have thestructural or grammatical level, where we look at the nouns in their immediatecontext and where we can identify which constructions they occur in. On thisstructural level we could even interpret some of the examples described in thisarticle as cases where the general noun needs supporting information: since itcould not stand alone, it needs a defining or restrictive modifier. But this leadsto the second point: the textual level. On the textual level we look at the nounsin their broader context and here we can describe which effects the noun canhelp to create with regard to longer stretches of text or even the whole text. Itis only then that we see how the general noun helps to present some piece ofinformation in a certain way. When Halliday (1970:326) talks about the textualfunction of language he points out an aspect which is of particular importancefor the definition of the support function: “it is only because we can select thedesired form of the message that we can also use language effectively both torepresent and experience and to interact with those around us”. It is this tex-tual point of view that makes us describe combinations of words as emphasis-ing devices, as means to slip in comments or to provide an introduction, as inthe examples above. Even though there seems to be some considerable over-lap between patterns and those word combinations in which a general nounfulfils the support function, the textual point of view can lead to a different in-terpretation of a construction than would be the case in the pattern grammarframework.

. Conclusion

As one of the factors that play a part in a corpus linguistic characterisationof general nouns, the support function is an example of how the textual be-haviour of words can be regarded as part of their meaning. This textual per-spective calls for an integration of structural description and functional inter-pretation. Within the scope of the present article, however, it was only possibleto present some tentative steps in this direction. Having made clear that gram-mar and lexis cannot be separated, corpus research needs to go further andpay appropriate attention to the textlinguistic dimension of meaning. Then acorpus is truly exploited as a collection of texts and not only as a source ofconcordance lines.



Notes

. Frequency has to be seen with regard to various factors such as ‘genre’, for instance.

. An important point is the relationship between general nouns and pronouns. Whiletheoretical approaches emphasise similarities and seem to suggest some extent of inter-changeability of pronouns and general nouns, as in Halliday and Hasan’s (1976:279) ‘as-cent’ example, corpus data does not seem to provide strong support for this assumption(Mahlberg 2000).

. Throughout the article I will use the abbreviations ‘BNC’ and ‘BoE’.

. Francis (1994) finds similar evidence for ‘restrospective labels’, which can bring in acomment or an evaluation “without having to make a special point of it” (Francis 1994:97).

. The textual dimension is briefly hinted at in the Pattern Grammar when the group of‘shell nouns’ is identified (cf. Hunston & Francis 1999:185ff.)

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